ByteDance launched Doubao 2.0, transforming the popular Chinese AI bot into a more powerful tool ready for the "age of agents."

Updated Doubao 2.0 chatbot from ByteDance

ByteDance, the owner of the popular video service TikTok, presented a new version of its AI chatbot — Doubao 2.0. The application is considered the most in demand in the country and is intended for the era of “AI agents,” when models can independently solve complex tasks rather than just answer questions.

Doubao’s Position Among Competitors

According to QuestMobile (end of December), Doubao leads among all Chinese chatbots: it has 155 million active users per week. DeepSeek ranks second with 81.6 million users.

New Versions and Capabilities

ByteDance announced four variants of Doubao 2.0 (Pro, Lite, Mini, Code). The Pro, Lite, and Mini models differ in depth of analysis and response speed.

- Doubao 2.0 Pro supports complex reasoning and multi-step task execution comparable in difficulty to GPT‑5.2 (OpenAI) and Gemini 3 Pro (Google). At the same time, usage costs are about ten times lower. The company emphasizes the importance of cost-efficiency: “Complex tasks require extensive analysis and multi-step generation, which will consume a huge number of tokens.”

- Doubao 2.0 Code is focused on programming.

ByteDance actively promotes its models both within China and abroad in anticipation of the upcoming Lunar New Year (starting next week).

Other Achievements by ByteDance

On Thursday, the company released the Seedance 2.0 model for video generation, which instantly went viral on Chinese social networks. This is compared to DeepSeek’s success last year.

The Overall Picture of China’s AI Industry

TASS notes the rapid development of artificial intelligence in China: by 2025, the number of generative AI users reached 602 million people (42.8% of the population). Last year, the share of AI app users grew by 141.7%.